Embers
by Motsie of Atlantis
Summary: What thoughts run through the mind of the team leader when Hetty brings in a beautiful young woman with strong computer skills in place both the "Wonder Twins" to complete a mission. Will it bring love or disaster to to the members of our team? Tag to 06x19 "Blaze of Glory"


**EMBERS**

 **Summary:** **What thoughts run through the mind of the team leader when Hetty brings in a beautiful young woman with strong computer skills in place both the "Wonder Twins" to complete a mission. Will it bring love or disaster to to the members of our team? Tag to 06x19 "Blaze of Glory"**

 **A/N: This is for G, who wondered if there would be another chapter. No, just another story. I apologize to those that have been patiently waiting for more chapters of Quinn. I made the mistake of reading the reviews of "Blaze" and the plot bunnies attacked again.**

 **Disclaimer:** The characters and sets of NCIS:LA are all owned by CBS, Donald P. Bellisario, and Shane Brennan. I only own a copy of the DVDs from season 1-5. I do get to play with everyone, but they all have to be home by curfew.

 **=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)=)**

 **Embers**

Team leader G. Callen was really pissed. While he and Sam were out that morning, Assistant Director Owen Granger ripped apart the group dynamics of one of the best teams that NCIS had ever seen. If Granger wanted to take over the duties of team leader, Callen would let him do all of it. He could lead the team into the next firefight. Maybe he could catch a bullet for the team, and if it hit in the right spot, the problem would be settled.

And it hurt him even more to think that their Projects Manager, Henrietta Lange, had played a role in it. This was the woman who had taken on the role of his surrogate mother. How could she have done such a thing to him and the rest of the people on his team, that she claimed as her children?

 **Earlier that day**

The Navy had just had their latest top secret missile system hacked. The military and production company engineers had been locked out of the system. They could do nothing to reverse the course or abort the missile. They watched the missile go off course and blow up a cabin cruiser, instead of the intended target vessel. The realization quickly hit everyone. If this system had been compromised, what other US military systems were vulnerable. If the software that was responsible for this hack job were to be sold on the open market, our enemies would be in control of everything we would have to fight them. The case was turned over to OSP.

Callen sent Kensi and Deeks to deal with Naval command. Meantime, he and Sam went to see if the Coast Guard had found any clues among the remains of the destroyed cabin cruiser. The younger agents found that a virus had been introduced into the Navy's secure computer system.

One of the Naval officers found he had gotten an e-mail for a Defense Department Conference that was a fake. When he had clicked onto it to view the schedule, the virus was unleashed into the secure computer system.

Kensi and Deeks had brought the affected hard drive in to let the wonder twins do their magic. They found out who had sent the virus that stole all the secure data. As they were going over to the small plasma in the bullpen to display the results they had found, Granger took control of the briefing. He had already decided that someone would have to infiltrate Disavow, the on-line group responsible for this act of sabotage.

Both Kensi and Deeks told Callen their versions of what had happened after that. Both stories were similar, but each centered on the tech that they felt closer to.

Deeks told Callen how Eric brightened up at the thought of going undercover. He also mentioned how quickly his face changed when Granger told him flat out that he was too old for the job.

Kensi chimed in that Nell was shot down too, when she thought that she was the only other one of the team qualified to do the job.

Instead, Hetty introduced someone new to the partially completed team. Miss Blaze Talcott, an extremely young woman stood there, with her long blond hair, brown eyes, designer hoodie, over-sized blouse over green leggings, throwback tennis shoes, carrying a large bag, not the picture of an NCIS agent. Callen could swear that he heard a small touch of resentment and bitterness in Kensi's description of the young girl.

Callen wondered if Granger had done that because of his hatred toward the team. He had tried to control them when Hetty had been recalled to Washington, but they circumvented him on every occasion. Granger had tried to match wits with Nell Jones, but even Callen knew that was no contest at all. If the Assistant Director had half a clue about how many operations had been run behind his back, while they appeared to be following his orders, he would be far more frustrated than he was now.

Certainly, this new temporary addition to the team wasn't really needed. It was just done in retaliation for Granger's bruised ego. Either one of their own geek squad could have done the job. With everything being done on-line, they would never have had to meet those responsible for the security hack.

Callen was familiar with Eric's file as a member of his team. He knew how good a hacker the man had been in high school and college. He had been one of the legendary black hats of the cyber world and spent much of his time on the dark net. He could have had a well-paying corporate job when he graduated from the New Jersey Institute of Technology in Newark. Instead, he gave it all up, moved to California, and took up the surfing life. To pay his bills, he hacked the systems of legitimate businesses. He only took a little, just enough to keep him going. He thought that he was too little for them to bother with. But then he screwed up, and caused the whole internet to crash. They searched for him and finally caught him. That's when Hetty stepped in and got his sentence suspended in return for his joining NCIS and working for her.

Callen knew that Eric had found the home and structure he needed in the Office of Special Projects. Although his main love was for things in digital format, his few true friends were the people he worked with. He would never betray those whose lives he held in the palm of his hand. He was too much a part of the team to break the promise he made to Hetty so long ago.

Granger never saw that part of the technical operator. All the Assistant Director saw was the non-conformist in loud print shirts, shorts, and sandals for winter and flip flops for summer. The boy just couldn't be trusted. Granger could not think of him as a man, because men did not play computer games and spend their time horsing around in the water on a surf board. Granger had been in the spy game longer than Eric was alive. When you deal with people's lives and national security, you don't put it into the hands of an immature child. Besides, he was a criminal, and the dark web was still there, calling him to return to a life of crime and fortune.

The Assistant Director had to have his own person in on this case, not just to get it done, but also to prove that he was the one in charge.

And that meant that Nell Jones could not be the one to go undercover either.

Callen swore that Granger saw the Intelligence Analyst as a younger, slightly taller version of Hetty, and was just as much afraid of this newer copy of the Operations Manager as he was of the original.

He couldn't control the older woman, and every time he tried to exert his influence over Nell, she found a way around it, or at least to change it so much that he didn't recognize his own order.

Callen asked Kensi how Nell took the news that Blaze was going undercover rather than the red headed pixie.

Kensi laughed, shaking her head, "Not well. First she wondered if Blaze was qualified for the work. Then Hetty informed us that the girl was just a student at Stanford."

"A Student?" Callen asked. "I didn't realize she was that young."

"I asked the same thing. We all were wondering about it." Deeks added.

"Nell then asked if she was cleared for classified material like this. You know it would be the same question Hetty would ask, if the situation was reversed. But Hetty told Nell that Blaze had a higher security clearance than she did. With that, Nell just seemed to shut down." Kensi told Callen.

"Do you think Nell was jealous, or just upset at that?" Callen asked his junior agent.

"We had a 'girls only' conference in the rest room. I asked her if she was upset that Hetty chose Blaze instead of her, but she said no, that Blaze was more qualified."

"Well, you know she is an analyst, and she usually has things figured out correctly." Callen said.

"Then I started asking her about Eric working with Blaze, and thought she was jealous that he was fawning all over the new girl instead of her. I was partially correct. She said she has no romantic feelings for Eric, so she wasn't jealous. She was more worried about what would happen when Blaze shot him down for being too old for her."

Callen's eyes got huge as he thought about what Nell had told Kensi.

Kensi saw his reaction, but couldn't understand it. "Eric was fawning all over Blaze. He tried to be a mentor to her right away, but she showed him that she didn't need his help. It went right over Eric's head. But Nell noticed, and that started her worrying about what it would do to her partner."

Callen raised an eyebrow at that.

"Crash and burn, Callen, crash and burn."

I told Nell that some May - December parings work out, But when she went through and explained it to me, I had to come to the same conclusion. If the two of them would get together, and Blaze got posted to Quantico, Eric would breach the terms of his probation. You know he would feel that he had to go along with her. Or he would stay here and stalk her every day, using every computer and camera he could find, to see if she remained faithful to him.

Callen could see both of these things playing out in Eric's life.

"But the biggest problem would be if she continued to outright reject him."

"Total crash and burn?"

"You got it. It might not happen immediately, but you know it would fester inside him until it broke out."

"And Nell worked all this out? For being so young, she has quite a bit of wisdom." Callen observed.

"She is worried about what that would do to her partner. Look what happened to Deeks, when I was in Afghanistan. What do you think Sam would do if something happened to you? Up in Ops, Nell and Eric are like two sides of the same coin; they think the same thoughts, they end each other's sentences, each one is part of the other. What do you think would happen if Eric was not there alongside of Nell to work with us?"

"I can't imagine breaking up any of the partnerships we have. It has taken quite a lot to build up the team as well as it is now."

"Precisely. I think that is what concerns Nell more than anything. She doesn't want to mess up the partnership that she has with Eric."

"Well, whatever you guys did, it seems to have worked. Eric hasn't gone off the deep end. I want to thank you two for all you did to help him."

"No problem, Callen" both Kensi and Deeks said.

 **. . . . .**

After the two of them left, Callen went off to find an empty office where he could hide out for a short time. Some of the things that Kensi and Deeks had said to him awoke unresolved feelings. He had thought that he had already dealt with them, but this brought them to the surface one more time.

He remembered when Hetty introduced the whole team to their new political analyst, Nell Jones. He knew the older woman's track record with political analysts, and went privately to Hetty, and asked her who was forcing this child on them.

"Why, no one, Mr. Callen." was the answer he received.

Callen could not believe it. This brash, presumptuous woman set everyone's teeth on edge when she actually started to work with the team. There actually was a pool on how long she would last. Hetty won it, of course. Callen could not believe how often Nell interrupted the briefings, trying to show everyone she was smart enough to belong.

He began to figure things out for himself after reading her file. Nell was an overachiever. She had a "type A personality with borderline ADD, and control issues with men she admires". Callen would claim that her control issues extended to all people she admired. After he began to understand her, he began to become more and more fascinated with the woman who suffered these control issues.

How many ways had adding her to the team improved the performance of each of the team members? Callen knew that he himself felt calmer when he could hear her give the information that they needed through their earwigs or over the coms.

You could always trust the information that she gave to be accurate. She was meticulous in each and every detail. Yet it never seemed overwhelming, especially at times when the team had to concentrate on what they were doing.

She had an uncanny ability to read people, even if it were just their images caught on a traffic or security camera. Many times she could profile a subject just from watching a small clip of their actions. Callen knew she was secretly studying how to read lips. This would give her another way of doing her job better and getting a more accurate profile of people.

Her likeness to Hetty was uncanny. Nell might not be even half as old as the Operations Manager, yet she had many of the same skills. There were many times when Nell just seemed to appear, like a ninja in training. And god, she had Hetty's gorgon stare down pat, just ask anyone who was petrified by that look of hers.

Hetty must have big plans for the political analyst. Callen realized the second week that Nell was there. Things happened that normally would have meant a termination for the younger woman. But Hetty took her aside and turned them all into teaching moments. Nell Jones was a quick study.

In a few short weeks, she came into possession of the first of many of Hetty's secrets. Even today, Nell was the only one that Hetty had provided with passwords and locations of most of her secret files. The young woman knew more about the woman whom Callen looked to as a surrogate mother than he did. and Callen knew the old lady at least four times as long.

As Callen continued to think about Nell, he started to recognize that she was not just a brain, locked up in her ivory tower of Ops. As the team leader, he had to sign off on all reports of the members of his team, Since Nell occasionally went out into the field, she had to go through all the field agent qualifications, in addition to her psychological ones to remain in Ops.

Like any leader, Callen worried about Nell's ability to handle a weapon. But Deeks pulled Callen aside at the firing range the first day that Nell had gone there and showed him one of the targets, specifically pointing out two holes that were overlapping. "Proud that you hit the target, Deeks?" he asked him.

"Not mine, Nell's. As fast as she could pull the trigger."

Sam inspected the target too, and agreed her shooting skills were exceptional. Everyone on the team began to realize that Nell might be small, but she could be very dangerous.

Callen didn't want to think of the several times that Nell had gone into the field, and he forgot to provide her with backup. Twice they almost lost her, due to his carelessness. Only through her quick thinking outside the box was the reason she still there with them.

She even made it through her first kill. Anyone who has had to do that, no matter what the circumstances, finds that it is something that will always be remembered, but something that is not to be discussed. The weak of heart find they cannot deal with it. The strong lock it away and go back into battle. Nell Jones was one of the strong ones.

 **. . . . .**

Callen could deal with everything professionally about her like that, seeing her up in Ops, listening to her over the coms, working with her out in the field.

The problem that G. Callen had with Nell Jones was not on a professional level. For him it had become personal. Her grating on him had somehow worn a hole in the walls he had put up to defend his heart. She infiltrated every possible space inside of him, so that she became the one he thought of in the few hours each night when he slept.

Night and day he could see her big amber eyes. He loved how the tiny flecks of green embedded in each iris sparkled when she was trying to figure out the answers to difficult questions. Those same eyes became dark and smokey when she became angry, but twinkled as they assumed the same color of well aged Irish whiskey whenever she laughed.

Her pixie cut hair, so natural for her, showing the whole world that she was not pretentious. She had not time to spend hours making sure it looked just so. All she did was run a hand through it and expected it to behave, like everything else in her orderly universe. He sort of wished she didn't start growing it out the way she did. But he could understand why she was doing it. She wanted to look a little older so people would take her more seriously.

Her hair color also seemed to differ according to her mood. Most of the time it was a reddish brown chestnut color, the perfect color hair for a diminutive pixie. But get her angry or upset, and the red began to deepen. It never got to the point of fire engine red, but Callen swore that it came close a couple of times. The thing he noticed most about Nell's hair, however, was that it always smelled of strawberries. The fresh picked ones, not those loaded with sugar, artificial flavors and other chemicals to try to capture the real scent.

There was nothing that was artificial about Nell Jones. She always spoke what was on her mind. It didn't matter how important the person was to whom she was speaking. Especially if they did something that was really stupid. Callen chuckled as he remembered telling her to pick on someone her own size once after dressing down an officer.

That trait also spilled over into her field work. Nell Jones could not lie outright to save her soul. Whenever they needed her to go undercover, her backstop story had to start out with a grain of truth. Then they would weave pieces of the story they needed into the fabric of the role that she was to play. When questioned, she could always revert back to that grain of truth, to avoid giving things away. Usually, she just used her awesome brain to weave more deception into her back story.

The team leader knew this from personal experience. Everyone on the team had to see Dr, Nate Getz for their quarterly psych evals, everyone, that is, except for Nell. She had to go to another psychologist to get her psych evals done. At first Callen thought that she had something going with Nate, but both of them insisted they were only friends and not romantically inclined. He did spend a lot of time with her after her first kill, but that was an unusual circumstance. Nell treated him a lot like an older brother, but any questions Callen asked about where she knew him from, were skillfully deflected.

All these things, wrapped up in such a small and lovely package, made Nell Jones the most intriguing person that G. Callen had ever met. He could see himself spending the rest of his life with a person like her. But the pixie was so unique, he doubted if he would ever find another female with all of her charming, uncommon characteristics. He knew he would never find another one that was even close to the rarity that was Nell Jones. So if he wanted to spend the rest of his life with someone like this, she was it.

Except for the facts of reality.

Kensi had told him about the age difference between Blaze and Eric. That wasn't even close to the difference in ages between him and Nell. He was much too old for her. He remembered one of the first times that she went out in the field with him and Sam. She looked like a kid running away from home. To her the world was new and exciting. She was filled with a youthful exuberance that Callen and this job were stealing from her.

How many young women her age had to make the decision to pull a trigger and kill a man? How often would she be fighting for her life out in the field, or making life and death decisions for others up in Ops. These were the things that rapidly aged a person. The mind was first flooded with all kinds of questions and doubts about the decisions that were made. Later, these transformed into the body, slowing the reactions, and allowing the pain of previous operations to limit the options of future ones.

He couldn't ask her to begin a relationship with someone as old as himself. She needed someone to share her youth, in all its wonders and excitement.

Not only was he old, but he was also broken - in so many ways. Anyone who entered a relationship with him got all the baggage he carried around with him for over four decades. Hell, he didn't even know his own name. He had no clue of who or where his father was. His mother was murdered while he watched. He was separated from his sister, his only relative, when he was brought to this country. Shuffled around into thirty-seven different foster homes, countless orphanages, and other state institutions, he only escaped when he aged out of the system.

His life hadn't gotten any better since he started working for the various agencies of the Federal government. The blood feud with the Comescu family might have been resolved by killing off most of their family members, but there still might be one or two of them out there, trying to kill him and his family.

Even if the Romanian crime family had been brought down completely, there were always those in this country that he had encountered, from local, small time criminals to international drug cartels. How many of these would pay to see him, and anyone he associated with, hurt and killed?

He could never ask anyone to step in and share that fate with him.

That is exactly what would happen if he sought out a relationship with one Nell Jones.

Both of their lives would change forever, even if the relationship would not work out. If it did work out, then the team dynamics would be forever changed.

Hetty was right, of course she always was. Callen could now see why there could be no relationships among team members. He would worry more about Nell's safety than directing the mission if she were out in the field with him. She could easily be distracted by her worries for him while she was supposed to be feeding them information from Ops. In both cases, the safety of the team would be compromised. That could quickly lead to injury, or even death.

 **. . . . .**

As Callen made his decision, he got up and went back to the bull pen, ready to deflect his thoughts, by once more centering his anger on the Assistant Director. To the rest of the team, he just needed some time to cool off.

But that was also the decision he had made about Nell. He needed to cool off any hope of a relationship with her. No matter how much his heart desired this desirable woman, no matter how much his body craved to enfold her in his arms, no matter how much his mind wanted to delve into the mysteries of this petite woman, he would not. He could not. Her life depended on it. The life of the team depended on it

The torch he was carrying for the little pixie sputtered for the last time, and the darkness of his heartache crowded in to overwhelm and suffocate his emotions.


End file.
